William, Bill, or Will Elder was born in 1921, the same year as Playboy artist Eldon Dedini—and while the two cartoonists were born on opposite coasts of America, their destinies would later converge in Chicago at Playboy.
During World War II, Elder served in the 668th Topographical Engineers and helped map the coast of Normandy, allowing the D-Day landings to take place.
Elder’s old buddy Harvey Kurtzman was the driving force behind the duo’s prodigious output and the two worked together throughout their lives. In the late 1940s, they teamed up with Charles Stern to form the Charles William Harvey Studio, creating comics for Prize Comics and other publishers between 1948 and 1951. At E.C. Comics, Elder inked John Severin’s pencils on stories for Weird Fantasy, Two-Fisted Tales, and Frontline Combat, among others, and when Kurtzman created MAD in 1952, he based much of it on Elder’s antics from their high school days.
Whatever humorous slant Kurtzman devised in his layouts received an amplified comedy boost when Elder drew the finished art, and Elder’s insertion of background gags set the tone for all their collaborative work.
Elder revamped one of Kurtzman’s earlier creations, Goodman Beaver, from his Jungle Book. Loosely based on Voltaire’s Candide, Goodman Beaver recounted the ongoing misadventures of a naïve everyman experiencing the seamier side of society. The writer/artist team worked on the Beaver strips in Help! magazine (which Elder considered his best) until they received an offer they couldn’t refuse from a certain pajama-clad publisher.
An unpublished Playboy color rough that finally saw print in Elder’s sketchbook, Chicken Fat, published by Fantagraphics in 2006.
Goodman Gets a Gun by Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder, from Help! #16 from 1962. Typically, the gags are set around the guys acting ga-ga about the gals. Look carefully at the background and you can even see Little Leaguers climbing a tree to check out the honeys!
